Stefany Solano Gonzalez
Biological Engineering Talk
Tailoring HPC skills applied to bioinformatics and omics to understand key biological features
BIO
Professor at the School of Biological Sciences National University of Costa Rica
ABSTRACT
Bioinformatics is a globally recognized and established field of study, applied across a wide range of organisms and datasets. This also applies for omics disciplines like genomics and transcriptomics, which contribute to unravel an organism’s potential from a metabolic perspective, holding great value across various applications. However, the wet-lab technologies associated with these types of studies are expensive and not always accessible to Latin American countries. Omics data requires bioinformatics processing, which relies heavily on high-performance computing (HPC) due to the massive amounts of generated data. However, it presents an opportunity gap for low-income countries, by outsourcing a portion of the experimental process and focusing energies on the computational analysis.
At the Universidad Nacional in Costa Rica, we have taken advantage of this opportunity. In this talk, I will share some ongoing projects focused on understanding an organism’s biotechnological potential for its manipulation and use. We have studied the fungal genome of B. bassiana to comprehend key metabolic and pathogenic elements, for its future application in designing biomaterials for agronomic purposes. We have also analysed coffee transcriptomics, studying both wild and mutant individuals to comprehend their responses to rust infections, caused by fungi, with the aim of developing nationally resistant strains. Currently, we are studying fungal biosurfactant production for industrial and health applications.